This application relates generally to the field of cellular-related quality of service. More specifically, the disclosure provided herein relates to coordinating and adapting multiple wireless quality of service (“QoS”) mechanisms.
Cellular-related QoS issues are a significant source of frustration for service providers as well as their customers. Common QoS issues include bandwidth limitations, jitter, delay and latency, packet loss, and interference. QoS issues may result in a number of problems for customers, potentially causing customers to change service providers. In one example, a customer may experience a “dropped call,” in which a phone call unexpectedly ends. In another example, a customer may experience a slow data transfer rate that is not suitable for transferring high-bandwidth content, such as video and music. QoS problems may result in unacceptable quality of service, causing customer dissatisfaction ranging from annoyance to anger.
In addition to conventional cellular services, such as voice and text messages, modern cellular devices are capable of, among other things, playing music, displaying video, surfing the Internet, and other bandwidth intensive applications. As broadband Internet access has become more pervasive at home and in the office, an increasing number of cellular customers are demanding that their cellular networks be able to provide similar speed and throughput as other broadband technologies, such as digital subscriber line (“DSL”) and cable modem. In particular, cellular customers commonly use their cellular devices to access real-time and near real-time multimedia and other high bandwidth content for business (e.g., virtual meetings) and pleasure (e.g., streaming music and video).
In many cases, cellular customers demand a high quality of service (“QoS”) and pay a premium to receive a high QoS. For example, business users who utilize cellular services for mission critical applications may demand that a minimum bandwidth be available during peak business hours (e.g., weekdays from 8 am to 5 pm). In order to provide these business customers with sufficient bandwidth, cellular service providers often face a variety of QoS challenges which can detrimentally affect QoS. One common QoS challenge is that cellular resources are generally limited. For example, the amount of bandwidth provided by cellular towers in a given area may be fixed. Another common QoS challenge is that cellular devices inherently move, sometimes to locations that are detrimental to cellular QoS. For example, a user may move to a location that creates a substantial amount of interference created by other users or obstacles.
In order to address these QoS challenges, cellular service providers may implement QoS mechanisms in order to improve QoS. A QoS mechanism may be implemented in hardware, firmware, software, or combinations thereof. Further, a QoS mechanism may be implemented at a cellular tower and/or at a cellular device. Traditionally, QoS mechanisms have been limited to improving conventional cellular services, such as voice and text messages. However, these conventional QoS mechanisms do not address QoS challenges related to high bandwidth cellular transmissions, such as streaming music and video. An example of a QoS challenge related to high bandwidth cellular transmissions is a large and uncontrollable variation in radio frequency (“RF”) link conditions that reduces bandwidth. As such, cellular service providers are implementing new QoS mechanisms designed to address QoS challenges related to high bandwidth cellular transmissions.
Many new QoS mechanisms are designed and implemented to address a limited problem or a limited subset of problems related to high bandwidth cellular transmissions. For example, one QoS mechanism may be designed and implemented to address co-interference caused by surrounding cellular devices. Another QoS mechanism may be designed and implemented to address large surrounding obstacles, such as skyscrapers, that may block RF signals. Typically, these QoS mechanisms are separately controlled and implemented. In many cases, cellular service providers will only implement selected QoS mechanisms, fearing that managing too many QoS mechanisms may become too complicated.